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Chapter 5x: Unbroken Heart
5x is essentially unchanged, with the exception of our new unit and the standard enemy bonuses. The enemies are actually a little weaker than usual, which is a nice break considering we have no healer.
First up, we have Ephraim. A lot of people like to say he's a super-broken lord, but that's a huge exaggeration. Still, he's a damn fine unit and unquestionably better than Eirika for the vast majority of the game.
Next up is Forde, who can't pull of the Dante look nearly as well as Josh. His big thing is holy shit that resistance. He's basically guaranteed to cap it after promotion (and probably before, given he only needs three points), making him more or less the de facto mage killer of the team.
Rath is an archer, and that's really all that has to be said about him. He's not statistically terrible, but he'd serve you better as basically any other class imaginable, especially a cavalier.
And Orson is Seth 2.0, rounding out our merry crew. Oddly enough, along with Tana he's one of the very few characters that didn't get recolors.
Orson starts us off by killing the soldier. Ephraim and Rath deal with the other, and Forde takes to the pillar. The knight won't move, so we can safely ignore him.
A combined effort deals with the archer. No one can double him unless Ephraim wants to burn Reginleif uses, so we do it the old fashioned way, leaving Orson to slightly retreat to avoid the fighter who's just behind the merc.
Ephraim takes advantage of Orson weakening the merc, and Rath and Forde fall just short of killing the fighter.
Ephraim remedies this by stabbing a dude in the dick.
The last fighter who will actively come to us is a ways off, so we'll grab the treasure now. Ephraim retrieves the door key and gets a shit level. Rath goes to the door to start wearing down the mage.
Rath gets the first hit and retreats to heal, leaving Forde to make a fool of the mage.
Seriously, why the fuck does Forde have so much resistance, this is amazing. 
I like you.
That fighter has finally arrived, so Forde blocks him and Rath takes a lucrative shot at him.
This fucking archer is the bane of my existence. He dodges three or four similarly-accurate attacks before finally dying.
Meanwhile, Ephraim continues to tear dudes apart. Reginleif is second maybe only to the Mani Katti in terms of being a broken early-game personal weapon.
Forde finally offs the damn archer and gets a mediocre at best level.
Ephraim's is a little better.
Forde is taking the left route in to abuse his massive resistance against the monk and shaman on the way down. Ephraim and Rath will go around the right side.
There we go, now we're talking.
Seriously, this isn't even fair.
Rath picks up a pretty bad level, but I'll take the speed. It's about the only thing that'll keep him in the active rotation.
We're almost done. The fighter is just out of range of Ephraim, so he'll be going over to Forde. Ephraim will take a shot from the archer, but he'll only take 4 damage and we can Elixir it away next turn.
Barring a huge upset by one of the myrmidons very soon, Forde is basically the best non-Seth unit on the team right now.
More Forde abuse sets up Ephraim for an easy kill.
And that'll do it for generics.
Zonta is still basically a joke. His Steel Blade will hit kind of hard, but he only has 10 AS and there are pillars right next to the throne, screwing his already low accuracy. +5 HP, +5 Str, +5 Skill, +5 Speed, +4 Def, +4 Res
Rath and Forde take some ranged shots and Ephraim hops on the pillar.
Another round of ranged hits and liberal application of Ephraim puts it away.
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Level 4 Lord
Lances - D, Affinity - Fire
Equipment - Reginleif, Steel Lance, Elixir
HP: 23 (+4) (80%)
Strength: 8 (+4) (55%)
Skill: 9 (+4) (55%)
Speed: 11 (+4) (45%)
Luck: 8 (50%)
Defense: 7 (+4) (35%)
Resistance: 2 (+2) (25%)
Con: 8
A lot of people will tell you that Ephraim is an unstoppable god on par with Ike and Hector. These people are wrong. Ephraim is good, but quite frankly, he gets screwed by his stat caps. If you gave him 30/30/30 for his Str/Skill/Speed caps, he'd hit every single one of them except speed (~29) on average. Unfortunately, we live in a reality where IntSys thought that might be a little much, so he gets Eliwood's stat caps instead. He's still better than Eirika in just about every way until late, late game when he and Eirika both cap everything they can, and you're probably not going to get into that kind of territory until you're deep in the postgame. As far as the main game is concerned, just point him in the general direction of anything that needs to die.
Level 6 Cavalier
Swords - D, Lances - C, Affinity - Wind
Equipment - Steel Sword, Javelin, Vulnerary
HP: 24 (+8) (85%)
Strength: 7 (+4) (40%)
Skill: 8 (+4) (50%)
Speed: 8 (+4) (45%)
Luck: 7 (35%)
Defense: 8 (+4) (20%)
Resistance: 2 (+15) (25%)
Con: 9
Forde and the case of his 17 Res is actually pretty simple, if I were to say that his personal bonus is unchanged from +2 Res. For some god-forsaken reason, our hacker felt that Cavaliers should have a class base of 15 resistance, which will make them a monumental pain in the ass to fight later. On the flip side, it does make Forde into an almost perfect mage killer, and he has pretty good growths to boot so he should end up a pretty fantastic unit all around.
Level 5 Archer
Bows - C, Affinity - Ice
Equipment - Iron Bow, Steel Bow, Vulnerary
HP: 27 (90%)
Strength: 12 (50%)
Skill: 11 (40%)
Speed: 9 (40%)
Luck: 6 (20%)
Defense: 10 (25%)
Resistance: 5 (20%)
Con: 8
This trade is one that really irks me. The hack reduces us from three possible cavaliers to just Forde or Seth/Orson if you want to go with prepromotes. Archers aren't a very good class considering how slow they start, and Kyle's 40% growth in speed is a little shakier than I'd like for the stat will make or break him. The rest of his growths are pretty good though, and Rangers are a great class if we stick with him (Snipers not so much, but they did get an interesting buff). He also gets points for not having an eye-searing recolor, so that's something.
Level 3 Paladin
Swords - A, Lances - A, Affinity - Dark
Equipment - Silver Sword, Steel Lance, Vulnerary
HP: 34 (+4) (80%)
Strength: 15 (+4) (55%)
Skill: 13 (+4) (45%)
Speed: 11 (+4) (40%)
Luck: 4 (25%)
Defense: 13 (+4) (45%)
Resistance: 7 (+4) (30%)
Con: 12 (+4)
Orson is Seth 2.0 with the unfortunate problem of being unavailable long enough for Seth to surpass his statistical lead. Like Seth, he's completely overkill when you first get him, so he really shouldn't even be seeing combat at all if you play your cards right. I've never really been a fan of him, but I guess he serves his purpose well enough.